September 28, 2008
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- How do you open minds that have been closed by fear and distrust?
- How do you get people to buy in who if they are not fearful, are at least skeptical and cynical?
- How to you get through to people who have heard it all before?
- What do you say to an audience whose eyes are glazed over with that "chicken little, sky is falling" look?
When your people look like deer in the headlights of a car, it's often less important what you tell them, than what you enable them to tell you. If you can have them vent—punch themselves out as the boxing world would call it—pause and then not do a "bum's rush" on them, they will spontaneously e-x-h-a-l-e, physically, mentally and psychologically. At the point they will begin to open their minds to what you have to say.
To make this happen gather your team together and have them each respond to these three instructions:
- "First, I would like each of you to describe an event in your life –professional or personal—that you didn't know whether you'd make it through, but you did. Describe it in enough detail so that we can all see it through your eyes and appreciate how monumental an event that was (more on this directive later).
- Next, after you do that, explain what or who helped you to make it through it and what they did (more on this later as well).
- Finally, pause and share what it is you learned about yourself from that situation and make any connections you can to the situation you are in now."
By doing this exercise and having people tell personal stories, they spontaneously start to relax mentally. Interestingly, when someone tells a story with vivid details, at the moment you can see the event through their eyes, they re-experience the feelings they had at the time of event. This further opens their minds and helps bond the group. Finally when people describe a person(s) who helped them through with the accompanying details they spontaneously feel gratitude toward that person. And you cannot feel deep gratitude and feel helpless or that something is missing at the same moment.
If you want you to add icing on the cake you can ask them if they would like to honor that person(s) who helped them. In nearly all cases they will say, "Yes."
If you then follow that with, "What's the best way to honor those people?" most teams will respond with "pay it forward, of course."
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September 20, 2008
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The less clear, the less transcendent, the less transformational a vision of the future, the more people argue in the present about what happened in the past. This is especially true when people come from a transactional mindset.
You not only see this being played out in the current presidential campaigns (where the candidates are long on blame and long on problems but short on transcendent, transformational vision). You see it in start up companies that see and try to seize an opportunity, but lack a vision and a strategy.
What is necessary in both situations is a compelling, convincing and doable noble vision that enrolls everyone into wanting to join it and then wanting to make it happen. J.F.K. did it with "putting a man on the moon by 1969." Woodrow Wlson with "making the world safe for democracy."
Years ago I was consulting to a recovery related internet site where everyone was a recovering alcoholic or drug addict. They were having an awful management meeting that was accomplishing nothing.
At one point I stopped them and asked each person how they describe this company to anyone who asks them. The essence is that everyone said it was a place that anyone who was in danger of losing his/her sobriety could come to and be saved from falling off the wagon. After than happened, cooperation spontaneously followed.
If you find that you and others are bickering and your company is not making much progress, look for a flawed vision that people neither see nor share in.
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September 4, 2008
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Hello Leadership group, you might be interested in my latest Leading Edge blog on the topic at: The Leading Edge - Instilling Confidence (Part 2)
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September 4, 2008
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A track record, my kingdom for a track record.
In my last blog I spoke about leaders needing to engender trust, because when people trust they feel safe, lean towards you and are more willing to listen to you. When people don't trust you, they feel wary and back away from you.
For people to begin to follow you, they need to have confidence in you. There are a couple factors that immediately come to mind that will produce that.
People don't care how much you know or can do,
until they know how much you can get done.
Nothing gives a person confidence as much as having already done something on multiple occasions that produced a positive measurable result in a similar area that they are now proposing to do again. Believing you can do something that you have been trained in, but that you have never actually done means you are unproven. As a result you are already off on a lie, especially when people either ask or are wondering what your actual experience and results have been.
A second factor is more about style than substance. In a word it's about having "swagger." Swagger is different than bravado, brazenness, chutzpah or arrogance and others are drawn to people with it, because they have swagger envy. Thus people are following not exactly out of trust or confidence, but out of envy.
I have swagger envy, especially of people who have quiet swagger and who don't have to resort to hyperbole or embellishment. When I think of people who have it, people like Oprah Winfrey, John Wooden and Clint Eastwood come to mind. My mentor, Warren Bennis, has it.
I also think of Presidents and Presidential candidates who have had it and how it worked for them. John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and even George W. Bush had it. Al Gore, John Kerry, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, MIke Dukakis, George H. Bush didn't have it. John McCain doesn't have it; Barack Obama does, however it tends towards the evangelical similar to Jesse Jackson.
Who do you know that has swagger? Is it something you wish you had?
Stay tuned for Commanding Respect (Part 3)
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August 21, 2008
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The first of Erik Erickson's eight stages of psychosocial development, is Trust vs. Mistrust. That is attained when a parent (primarily the mother) can leave a child without the child becoming anxious or enraged, because the child "trusts" that she will return.
This is critical to development because if you start out in life trusting the world, you feel safe, calm and optimistic and can remain focused on what you need to do. If you start out distrusting the world, you feel endangered, anxious and pessimistic and are easily distracted looking either for that dangerous thing to happen or for safety to come back.
What does psychosocial development have to do with the contemporary business world and leadership? In a word, PLENTY.
Given the unpredictability of the economy, the difficulty believing what leaders say, the increasing belief that rumors are true, more and more workers are feeling anxious, upset and having trouble sustaining a calm, steadfast focus.
What is a leader to do?
A leader needs to see clearly and articulate clearly a vision, that makes sense, feels right and is doable in the minds of their people. When all three are present, people not only trust, but they "buy in" and enthusiastically work towards achieving that vision. When any of them are lacking, people feel distrust and stop, if not pull back. Too often in business start ups (especially during the dotcom boom several years ago) we have watched companies recognizing an opportunity, but without a clear, articulatable vision to compel people to follow. Remember how it seemed that boom would never end and money was being thrown at anything that was Internet related.
Given the concern about ROI and numbers, and a need to curb the high flying and high spending habits of many CEO's, financial types have come in to try to keep things on tracks. But actuaries are not visionaries (think John Sculley vs. Steve Jobs).
"The Gift that Keeps on Giving" is a slogan which supposedly originated with regard to the phonograph and has been used by many companies, including Kodak. More apropos to our discussion is that "Vision is the Gift that Keeps on Leading" by enabling people to trust again. And if you haven't noticed, American workers are sorely in need of something that will allow them to trust once more.
Stay tuned for part two – Instilling Confidence
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July 27, 2008
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Leadership is not all that complicated. If a leader inspires Confidence, engenders Trust and commands Respect, people will gladly follow. On the other hand if a leader triggers doubt, engenders distrust and elicits disrespect, people will not follow.
Confidence is caused not by what you can do, but by what you have already done in situations similar to the one you are about to undertake that produced a positive measurable result (i.e. relevant experience + demonstrated competence) that is verified by outside objective evaluators. Central to this is a track record of making what Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis* in their book: Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls say are clear judgment calls that lead to positive results.
Trust is caused by doing what you say you will do when you say you will do it after you have made that judgment call. It’s also about accepting full responsibility for those actions and a willingness to deal with whatever consequences they produce. (Caveat emptor – leaders and follows must accept the fact that they have more control over what you do than over the results).
Respect is caused by clarity of purpose and commitment to it through action. It’s taking a clear stand (based on sound judgment) and standing up for it and standing up against those underminers, terrorists and enemies to the common good who oppose it.
I would be interested if readers agree with these elements as valid and if so how their leaders stack up when seen through this filter.
* Catch a live interview with Warren Bennis on July 29 at LeadingNews on "Leading for a Lifetime."
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July 22, 2008
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Getting your mind on track to win
Visualization – The Eye of a Tiger
In the late 1980’s an area of the prefrontal cortex macaque monkeys was discovered that has been named the “mirror neuron” system.
This group of neurons fire when you watch an action in another primate, when you visualize it in your mind’s eye and then when you actually do it. They are hypothesized to be the site responsible for imitation, learning and empathy and when defective as a possible site leading to autism.
That may mean that when an athlete visualizes a ski trail, the flight of a ball, jumping over a hurdle, etc. that this part of the brain actually believes they have done it. That may explain why so many athletes use visualization in their training.
Mental Toughness - The Heart of a Tiger
One of Tiger Wood’s earliest coaches used a 3 R method for helping him stay centered and focused after hitting a bad shot: React, Refocus, Reengage.
React – It feels lousy and upsetting to make a mistake anytime, anywhere for almost anybody. Reacting means naming what you feel and then feeling it, without acting on it. Matthew Lieberman at UCLA has shown that attaching the correct emotional word to a feeling and saying to yourself or better someone else (like a coach), “I feel x” reduces amygdale activation (emotionality) in the middle brain by a significant percentage.
Refocus – After you have acknowledged and accepted it, breathe slowly and deeply several times and let it go. This “exhaling” will free up mind space and enable you to refocus on what you need to do.
Reengage - After you have had a chance to refocus and possibly tap again into your mirror neuron system described above, reengage and then “execute.” That is the word Tiger uses in the moment before he hits a shot.
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July 17, 2008
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Leadership is creating the possibility of a future
that wasn't going to happen
and then enrolling others
into taking action to fulfill that future.
- Ivan Rosenberg, CEO, Frontier Associates
Through The Effective Leader Program, Ivan and his company recently did that with Housing Authority of the County of San Bernardino who had previously seen themselves as simply a provider of low cost housing for the disadvantaged. After working with them to imagine beyond their imagination, they committed to everybody having a stable and enriched quality of life. And housing is the first stepping stone to accomplishing that. When looking from the present forward they didn't think they could do anything to reduce the waiting period of 8 years because of limited resources. But in standing in this new future, and looking backwards to the present, they were able to develop a doable strategic plan for reducing the wait time to 10 days.
If you're like me, you also love both smart and wise approaches to solving problems.
For those of you who like listening to something that is really smart, you won't want to miss, Dan Heath's Virtual Seminar, Creating High-Impact Ideas that Work, a great live presentation for you and your team on August 28 presented by the Center for Great Management.
And one of the best opportunities to get a huge serving of wisdom will be to catch leadership guru, Warren Bennis, co-author of the recent book, Judgment, and just released book, Transparency, when he is interviewed on "Leading for a Lifetime," a free TeleForum on Tuesday, July 29 at Leading News, hosted by Marshall Goldsmith and Patricia Wheeler.
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July 10, 2008
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One of Freud's dictums was: "Where id is, let ego be." In essence, replace your runaway impulses (Id) with a more reason/reality driven (Ego) approach to life. Not a bad guide
to live by, given the times of Freud and the rise of Germany in early/middle part of the last century.
Something more apropos for today's corporate and political world might be: "Where 'hub and spoke' is let 'triads' be."
For "hub and spoke" think GE under Jack Welch; for "triad" think of the open source approach under Google.
Under "hub and spoke" you have a powerful leader that everyone relates to through and through (think George W. Bush, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton). The good news for the leader is that he/she gets to be in control; the bad news for everyone else is that the "spokes" get into a "sibling rivalry" for the attention of the leader, feel a "zero sum" competition between each other including occasional feelings of paranoia and consciously or unconsciously undermine each other rather than working to help each other. This also can make succession difficult, because often that powerful figure is difficult to replicate.
With a "triad" the leader has an inclusive, compelling vision (think Barack Obama), hires the best collaborative people (think Al Gore), and then facilitates relationships between the spokes in as completely an open, transparent and mutually supportive way possible. Trust and generosity is placed from the leader into the other members of the triad.
With "hub and spoke" the leader appears to hoard power(despite words to the contrary) and instead of trust and generosity directs fierce accountability towards the spokes with the edict that the bottom will be sloughed off to maintain optimal performance. Such a culture may get performance in the short run that shareholders will like, but few people will enjoy working at such places (even if they are richly rewarded with stock options).
Given the success of Google and the trials and tribulations of GE (despite Jeff Immelt trying to move away from a "hub and spoke" culture), hub and spoke may be an idea whose time has come…and gone.
To learn more about this, check out the best management and best book on cultural transformation that I have read in many years. It's entitled Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization by Dave Logan, John King and Halee-Fischer-Wright.
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June 30, 2008
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Before you hire your next President, COO (or even CEO to be hired by a board) circulate among all the people who work at your company this request to be answered anonymously:
"A search is now being conducted for a new president, COO, CEO, etc. please answer the following anonymously and don't name particular names.
1. Imagine it is Sunday night and you are looking forward to Monday and that the week flies by because you feel so glad to work here.
a. List the adjectives that would describe the workplace here to cause you to feel this way.
b. List the qualities of the President, COO (or whoever you are searching for) so that you would feel this way.
2. Imagine it is Sunday night and you dread Monday, the weeks takes forever and you are often thinking of leaving this company.
a. List the adjectives that would describe the workplace here to cause you to feel this way.
b. List the qualities of the President, COO, etc. to cause you to feel this way.
Then when you are interviewing candidates for President, COO, etc. ask them what adjectives their direct reports, fellow executives, directors, employees would use to describe them. If they don't know, ask them what those people would that leader's values are. If they don't know that either, you're dealing with someone without much emotional intelligence and you may want to be cautious.
If you think this is useful you can do a similar one for your company's most important customers/clients, questions would be along the lines:
Your products/services causes them to say, "This is the best product/service we use" vs. "I'm very close to stopping using that product/service and why."
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